Open Office 3.2: Faster, More Office Compatibility

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The concept of an office suite, with word processing, spreadsheet and
presentation software, is one that is well understood by users, which is
also why it’s often difficult to improve them. Users already expect
their office suites to do certain things, making the job of office suite
developers often one of fit and finish.

That’s the case with the new open source OpenOffice.org 3.2 (OOo) office
suite release this week.

OOo is included in nearly every Linux vendor’s distribution while
also being available for a number of other operating systems, including
Windows. With the OOo 3.2 release, developers have fixed bugs, made the
suite faster and improved compatibility with file formats from
Microsoft.

The release also comes during a period of transition, as Sun
Microsystems — the leader of the OOo effort — is now part of Oracle.
While Sun has been directing OOo, it has been joined by multiple
participants in the OOo ecosystem, among them Novell, which considers
itself to be the No. 2 contributor to OOo development.

“One of the problem with such a big project is that getting big
headline features every three months is relatively difficult,” Michael
Meeks, distinguished engineer and leader of Novell’s (NASDAQ: NOVL) OOo
efforts, told InternetNews.com. “For me, what matters most is
that our users are happy, we fixed loads of bugs, little crawly, nasty,
wiggly ones that sometimes caused crashes but also some missing
features. For me, that’s quite exciting that the quality is improving
and continuing to get better.”

A key area of improvement in OOo 3.2 over its predecessor OpenOffi
ce.org 3.1, which debuted in May 2009, is a noticeable improvement
in startup time for the application.

Meeks noted that startup time is a very important component of user
experience and one that will keep on improving.

“You can start in a handful of seconds now, but it’s still too long,
in my view,” Meek said. “But it’s a lot better than it has been.”

One of the drivers for faster OOo startup time, according to Meeks,
is the use of OOo on netbooks. Additionally, he said there is a
perception that fast software is good software, and it’s something that
users now expect.

Another improved aspect of OOo 3.2 is its compatibility with
Microsoft Office file formats. Novell
has an interoperability agreement with Microsoft dating back to
2007.

“I can assure you that we don’t have any secret knowledge from
Microsoft. Mostly our job is to look at public formats, specifically
OpenXML (OOXML),” Meeks said. “Microsoft also published the binary file
format documentation under their Open Specification Promise. So there
are some good things that Microsoft has made available, and that has
helped to fix bugs.”

The Open Specification Promise is a Microsoft initiative that opens
up its specifications for use by developers. It has been criticiz
ed in the past by some open source groups as not going far enough
in protecting developers from potential intellectual property violation
risks.

Among the OpenXML improvements in OOo 3.2 is the ability to open and
save Calc spreadsheet files in Open XML, which is the MS Office format.

Sun, Oracle and OpenOffice

Moving forward, as OOo transitions to life under the stewardship of
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), Meeks is optimistic that it will be a very good
thing for OOo.

“Our participation hasn’t changed, but not all of our work goes to
Sun,” Meeks said.

He added that over the years, there have been various issues about
control and project features, which is why Novell also has its own open
source version of OOo that provides additional interoperability features
over the main Sun release of OOo. And then there’s IBM’s own Lotus
Symphony With Oracle now in charge, Meeks hopes that divisions in the
OOo community will be resolved.

“OpenOffice is unusual in being very fragmented, we have IBM’s Lotus Symphony, Novell’s
version, and Sun’s version,” Meeks said. “We could do more together, but
it’s a matter of getting conditions right and I’m optimistic Oracle will
do a good job here.”

“I’m full of optimism. Oracle has had a good track record of engaging
in some open source project and I’m encouraged by their Linux
engagements,” he said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news
service of Internet.com, the
network for technology professionals.